‘My Fellow Americans’ and Obama’s other empty words

SALT LAKE CITY, Nov. 25, 2015 – Americans have their president. But their president doesn’t have them. On the heels of Hope and Change in 2009, President Obama has slowly, but decisively, drifted away from his unity message.

Oh, sure, he mentions it now and again—like a bad shirt that you wear every now and then to try to prove to yourself that it wasn’t a mistake to buy.

So it was yesterday, during a joint appearance with French President Hollande, that Obama dusted off the old platitudes about how he’s in it for us. How he’s a fighter.

They are empty words and phrases: “…my fellow Americans…”

Obama has been at war, rhetorically, with more than half of those Americans for the better part of seven years. Just last week the president, standing on foreign soil, rebuked the majorities of his constituents who have grave concerns about admitting refugees from Syria.

He described those Americans as wannabe-tough-guys who are afraid of little old women and small children: “First, they were worried about the press being too tough on them during debates. Now they’re worried about 3-year-old orphans. That doesn’t sound very tough to me.”

Obama has demonstrated a pattern of bad-mouthing his fellow citizens, as if his main concern is his base, or worse, the European intelligentsia.

He went on yesterday to say, “Let’s remember we’ve faced greater threats to our way of life before. Fascism. Communism. A first world war. A second. A long Cold War.”

Okay. The “we” seems gratuitous. He isn’t really copacetic with all the measures taken to face those threats, is he? Eugene Debs? The House un-American Activities Committee? Internment of Japanese? A draft? Actually fighting?

“Each and every time, we prevailed,” the president assured us. “We have prevailed because our way of life is stronger. Because we stay united.”

Is he just going through the motions? When he puts on a smile and talks about unity, it’s tough to take for the millions of Americans who have been called “un-American” because they disagree with this policy or that.

President Obama has sought to govern by humiliation. He’s tried to win policy fights with insults to his loyal opposition. He has tried—for seven years—to divide and conquer. Not ISIS or al Qaeda or the Taliban. But Americans.

“Fellow” isn’t an adjective that is appropriate for this president to be using.

If one more year seems like a long time to suffer him, just imagine how he feels having to put up with all of us.